Tag: work

Creating Dress-Up Mannequins in Illustrator

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I’ve created a helpsheet for everyone who has ever wanted to create digital dress-up dolls! This shows how to import images to use as fills for clothing, so you can scan in some material and use if as a dress or something! [issuu layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml showflipbtn=true documentid=091126100916-9a77928acc34455fb42f78bedaf9efc0 docname=creating_dress-up_mannequins username=deKay loadinginfotext=Creating%20Dress-Up%20Mannequins%20in%20Illustrator width=420 height=297 unit=px] (Download the PDF here: Creating Dress-Up Mannequins) I realise this may seem like a bit of a random thing for me to produce, but it was something I …

Reversed Y-axis charts in Excel 2007

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I had an unusual query this week. A member of staff wanted to create a line graph that showed the chart position of a song over a number of weeks.¬¨‚Ć It’s an easy thing to do – two columns in the spreadsheet, one for “Week” and one for “Position”. Problem is, in a chart, the low numbers are at the top and the high numbers are at the bottom, so the graph comes out upside-down. You can’t just make the …

Redirected folders on disconnected PCs using GP loopback processing

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Over the summer at work, we changed the way staff profiles are stored on the network. Having finally got around the “redirected Application Data breaks Internet Explorer” problem (see here for my fix) in Windows XP, we rolled it out to all users. And all was well. Until they brought their laptops back from the break, and we found they then can’t run various programs or access certain things when not connected to the network. This is because the laptop …

Finally! A working Adobe CS3 install script!

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After what seems like a year of aborted attempts, this week I’ve made a concerted effort to deploy Adobe CS3 Design Premium on our XP network. This morning, I was successful! There were several problems to overcome, including lack of MSIs, inability to “roll your own” MSI due to the Adobe Licencing Service throwing a wobbly if you do, inserting the serial number, forcing it to install on machines with under a gig of RAM, coping with the sheer size …

Flooding at work

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There was just a little bit of thundering, lightning, and rain this afternoon. The Sky Gods were upset, it seemed. Lightning hit the building at least twice, frying the wireless network and killing my fax machine with magic blue fire. And it was wet. Oh, was it wet. The “puddles” had waves.

Underhand sales tactics

 

Update 20th February 2011: Despite complying with all of the requests from PDC, removing comments and so on, they’ve contacted me again and asked me to remove the post entirely. So with regret, I have done so. Sorry everyone – I suggest you take up your complaints directly with the company.

Cold Caller Games #1: Hello? Hello?

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At work, I get a lot of phonecalls from those recorded messages offering me cheap mortgages, help with my debts, free international calls, discounts on badger feed and that sort of thing. You know the ones – you pick up the phone and say hello, then after a couple of seconds a recording kicks in explaining the offer then asking you to press a number. Of course, on my own phone I’d hang up before they even explained who they …

Domain name renewal scam

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I got another one of those read-it-or-fall-for-it domain name expiry scam at work emails today. Like the last one, it relies on you panicking when you read it and think your company’s domain name is due to expire – today – and you hurriedly send off your pennies to this company in order to keep your site running. Of course, that isn’t what’s happening. This company are actually selling you a search engine submission subscription. Something which is pretty useless …

My April Fool today

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This morning I sent an email to everyone at work: To: All Staff Subject: Paying for internet access after Easter As you’re aware, money is tight next year. To make things worse, our school internet connection costs have increased – mainly because we are now metered, and have to pay-per-site rather than per-month. It’s a bit like having Pay As You Go rather than a monthly contract on your mobile. In consultation with a working party of staff, it has …

Imprisoned for a crime I didn’t commit

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I found myself imprisoned at work today. It’s the holidays, so very few people are in anyway. A guy from BT was coming in to do some work on our internet connection, so I had to go and meet him at the front door as none of the receptionists were in. Fairly recently, they installed a security door behind the main door, so there’s a sort of porchway now. I opened the security door (there’s a push button release on …